State Audit: “What’s Up Stud?”

An audit today on the state Office for Technology found a troubling pattern of favoritism and perhaps illegal procurement to benefit state employees, Comptroller Thomas DiNapoli said.

DiNapoli forwarded his concerns to the new Joint Commission on Public Ethics, which could pursue criminal charges.

The most blatant charges comes against the agency’s former Deputy Chief Information Officer Rico Singleton. The audit found that at the same time he was personally negotiating a multi-million dollar contract with the software company McAfee, Singleton befriended an account manager at McAfee and used his state position to help get a job at McAfee for his girlfriend.

One of the emails in the audit (on page 10) from a McAfee account manager to Singleton starts with “What’s up stud? I had a blast the other day.”

In another exchange, McAfee workers said they should hire the person Singleton wanted, saying “We’ll have to do as he wishes … don’t want to piss him off.”

DiNapoli said in a statement that “These officials were supposed to lead New York State’s efforts to modernize technology, but my office found flagrant misconduct and that no one within OFT stepped forward to question these actions, indicating a systemic breakdown in agency ethics.”

The audit came after DiNapoli’s office in 2010 rejected a $7.5 billion contract for the agency. Auditors found OFT officials wasted at least $1.5 million in state money on a $5.7 million, three-year agreement with McAfee.